Why Sarah Almost Titled Her Book Prodigal Daughter Who Is the Worst

Mockingbird’s latest publication, Churchy by Sarah Condon, is flying off the shelves! A hilarious and deeply touching dispatch from the trenches of contemporary life, the book recounts the real life (and grace-saturated) adventures of a wife, mom, and priest as only Sarah can. The introduction alone, excerpted below, features tips on raising churchy kids of your own, and an explanation of the startling white robes seen here:

“Are you guys wearing KKK hoods?!”

I started college at a small liberal arts school in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Upon arrival, I affixed several family photos to the wall of my dorm room. After about a week of classes, one of my friends uncomfortably pointed to a photograph of me and my brother and asked the above question.

“Nope,” I quickly snapped back, “those are acolyte robes. We were at church.”

Like most of my Mississippi peers, I grew up in a household where church was a mandatory activity. But unlike the committed Southern Baptists and dutiful Presbyterians of my childhood, I couldn’t have told you exactly why. We did not read the Bible at home. No one asked me if I wanted a Promise Ring at fourteen. Bibles were for keeping family records, and sex was for college. This was the sage wisdom of my childhood.

When my mother would wake us up at 7:30am to get ready for the early service, I would complain to her that our churchgoing made little sense. She appeared to lack the fervor of her peers. My parents never lectured us on salvation or moral behavior. Our church attendance never had much to do with the way my parents voted or who they kept as friends. What was the point? Why were we even going? In response to my complaints Mom would simply say, “We take you to church every Sunday so you have something to fall back on when life gets hard.”

Life did get hard. Not because something dramatic happened but because I am a person in the world. I didn’t last very long at that college in Santa Fe because I am more straight and narrow than I would like to admit. I ended up at the University of Mississippi. It took me two years to have more than one friend. And all the while, I kept going to church.

Much to both my parents’ and my surprise, I felt called to ordained ministry. Which just goes to show, the harder you pray for your child to be a pastor, the more likely you are to end up with a mixologist. My advice for raising children to be Christian is to take them to church and not talk about it too much on the ride home.

Life is hard now for other reasons. I married a wonderful guy named Josh who also happens to be a person in the world. So we love each other unequivocally and also fight about things like how fast he drives or the lack of mayonnaise in my egg salad. We have two children, Neil and Annie. And while they are the best thing that has ever happened in the history of the planet, they are not the fashion accessories that the Kardashian family promised me they would be.

Josh and I are both Episcopal priests. But most Sundays, you can find me in the pew with our children. On occasion, I stand behind an altar and celebrate communion. All of it is wonderful, altar and pew. Yet despite how much our life sounds like a liturgical Hallmark movie, you’ll find in the following pages that we are just as smelly, angry, and broken as you are. And you will see that church is a place I cannot seem to stay away from.

Often, when my children are noisily barreling down the aisles for communion, I remind myself that it’s a good thing how comfortable they are in church. In truth, we are there so much that it must feel like home to them. At home you let it all hang out. You are loud and insistent, loving and sad, joyful and funny. Through the beautiful language of the church, my children are learning that Jesus loves them. They are hearing about their own sin and God’s forgiveness. Also of great importance, our weekly church habit offers them something to fall back on when life gets hard.

Originally, I wanted to call this book Prodigal Daughter. Whenever I read that parable, I am struck by how much I resemble both of the siblings involved. I am the daughter who runs away from God, looking for the world to bring me happiness. Yet, I am also the daughter who thrives on righteousness and responsibility (Luke 15: 11-32).

It turns out that somebody already wrote a book called Prodigal Daughter. In fact, several people have written books by that title. Some of them are written by parents who refer to their children as “prodigal” (Seems a little judgmental to me. Does that make the parents God?). Others appear to be bonnet-rippers, which is to say, chaste erotica. And if there is anything I have not been in my life, it is chaste. My expertise lies elsewhere.

Fortunately, as St. Paul wrote, “Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.” Incidentally, I Am the Worst would have been an excellent title for my book. We went with Churchy because it sounds like a nightclub and because it is undeniably true.

The truth is I am churchy to my core and proud of it. I need the sacraments, I long for the liturgy, and, to be totally honest, I enjoy weak coffee. Mostly though, I am churchy because I need to hear the Gospel preached week in and week out. I have never understood believing in Jesus and not going to church. I don’t judge the choice. I just figure non-churchgoing Christians must have a better memory than I do. Because I forget about the unrelenting grace of God all the time. I have to hear about it with alarming regularity.

I suppose that’s a long-winded way of saying that the real title of this book should be Churchy Prodigal Daughter Who Is the Worst. Which is a mouthful, sure, but at least it beats The Adventures of a Chaste Klan Girl.

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7 comments

The problem with going to church and hearing the Gospel preached week in and week out, Sarah, is that 99% of Christian churches are not preaching the Gospel. As one Gospel-preaching pastor said, the evangelical church needs a reformation. The large percentage of Bible-believing churches today sprinkle you with Jesus, but flood you with “do more/try harder.”

Unfortunately my church is hit or miss with the gospel. About half the time its the glawspel. Ive had to resort to a sort of lowest common denominator approach to church: “well at least there is some good news…” This really just makes room for any message though. Its hard to say where we draw that line. I dont know.

That’s exactly it Mike. I used to go more often until I started hearing about Jesus a lot and then going became a hard thing. I only go now for the others there and some fellowship maybe but I know it’s very likely they won’t preach Jesus. I even heard one prominent pastor on tv making fun of preaching Jesus. Unfortunately some just don’t wanna hear it. It’s also interesting how much I’d hear a message on God loves you (before I started getting saturated with the gospel) but so many other sermons would be conflicting that you’re not sure God loves you that at some point He won’t love you anymore. Anyway it’s like I’m starving when I don’t hear the gospel and then get sprinkled with Jesus.

Sarah, I can’t wait to read the book! I have always enjoyed your posts and conference talks. By the way, that piece about not talking so much about the bible at home was helpful – it truly set me free. I ALWAYS worry that I’m not spending enough time “discipling” my kids or having “family devotional time”. The desire/intention is there, but the energy often isn’t… also, I am never sure if “too little” (danger of creating legalistic kids) or “too much” (they can’t teach themselves Scripture after all…) is appropriate! I’m not a very good spiritual leader of my family in the traditional sense! My kids hear me pray when I’m exhausted and/or frustrated: “Help me, Dad!” And then they always get confused, thinking I’m talking to Grandpa!

Also, re: the comments on this post: it’s so interesting to see the same sentiment expressed about the scarcity of law/gospel preaching in many churches. I too have been experiencing the same dilemma over the last 6 years since this message of grace first became clearer to me than when I was converted over 15 years ago. It’s been impossible to actually find a place where on Sundays our family can hear law distinguished from gospel properly the way Mockingbird and related ministries so clearly elucidate it. I too have found myself ‘settling’ for a local church where at best you hear fragments of gospel floating in a morass of cheap-law/low-view of Law preaching. You’ll hear the gospel, you’ll hear Christ extrapolated from a text, you get excited… and then the let-down comes: it circles back to expectations that the gospel MUST now change your horizontal life in a very radical and noticeable manner. Yikes!
I go in order to have fellowship with others, because there is actually some good community involvement (which is never bad), and to say “I went to church today”. 🙂 Most often though, I mentally sift, filter, and have to re-gospelize the glawspel I hear. So interesting to hear that this is a more common and widespread occurrence than I realized.

Jason, thanks, yes. To be honest, that’s why I end up in liturgical churches. Even if the preacher can’t get it right, I can at least count on the rest of the service to be theologically sound. Unless the preacher also meddles with things he should leave alone.

I love that you call God “Dad.”

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[…] As has been well before established, I was not raised with parents who fixated all that much on church. We went every Sunday. But there weren’t a lot of “extras.” We didn’t come back for any Wednesday programming. I honestly cannot remember a potluck supper. And my mother would have straight up told you that anyone who attended worship on Christmas Day needed their head checked. […]

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WHAT: Mockingbird seeks to connect the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life in fresh and down-to-earth ways.

WHY: Are we called Mockingbird? The name was inspired by the mockingbird’s peculiar gift for mimicking the cries of other birds. In a similar way, we seek to repeat the message we have heard – God’s word of grace and forgiveness.

HOW: Via every medium available! At present this includes (but is not limited to) a daily weblog, weekly podcasts, a quarterly print magazine, semi-annual conferences, and an ongoing publications initiative.

WHO: At present, we employ four full-time staff, David Zahl, Ethan Richardson, Margaret Pope and CJ Green, and four part-time, Sarah Condon, Bryan Jarrell, Luke Roland and Marcy Hooker. They are helped and supported by a large number of contributing volunteers and writers. Our board of directors is chaired by The Rev. Aaron Zimmerman.

WHERE: Our offices are located at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, VA.

WHEN: Mockingbird was incorporated in June 2007 and is currently in its 11th year of operation.

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